The Steer Files, Six Months On: What Hard Techno Actually Changed
Six months after the Steer files emptied hard techno line-ups, the removals held but the process behind them still has not been written down.
In late February 2026 an Instagram account run by a former partner at Steer Management began publishing screenshots and testimonies accusing several of hard techno’s biggest names, and within days promoters on four continents had pulled them from line-ups. Festival season has since come and gone. What actually changed underneath it is the harder question.
Reported line-up changes reached events including HIVE, XXL, Face2Face and REBELS Mexico.
What was alleged, and what was said back
The account, posting as bradnolimit and quickly nicknamed the Steer files, named artists including Shlømo, Odymel, CARV, Basswell and Fantasm. Reported claims ranged from harassment and coercion to drink spiking and sexual assault. None has been tested in court.
All of the named artists responded. Shlømo called the accusations “a campaign of slander and defamation based on false information” and signalled legal action, saying he had never committed sexual abuse against a woman. CARV posted a statement headed “I was unfaithful”, acknowledging that private messages had circulated while denying any non-consensual behaviour or criminal wrongdoing. Odymel described an episode of sexsomnia, a rare sleep disorder, said a preliminary investigation was under way and that no judicial decision had been reached. Fantasm rejected the claims as untrue and defamatory.
The scene moved faster than any process
The sequence is the point. Testimony landed on Instagram, promoters cancelled within 48 hours, and only then did the agency respond: Steer suspended collaborations with Shlømo, Basswell and CARV without naming anyone publicly. It did not hold the roster together. Artists including alt8, Lola Cerise, William Luck, 6EJOU and DJ Physical announced their departures, and the roster page came down entirely.
On 25 February the Association For Electronic Music restated its code of conduct and pointed to two things that already existed: a confidential reporting line operated independently by Health Assured, and CIISA, the standards body it helps fund to run mediation and investigation across the creative industries. “Change cannot rest on victims speaking out,” the statement read. “It is a shared responsibility.”
The Techno Airlines view
Both clocks are still out of sync. A booking can be cleared in two days; complaints and investigations move in months or years, and a genre this dependent on touring has no shared standard for the space in between. Nobody has published a threshold for what a removal means, when it is reviewed, or what a return would require. Until somebody does, every promoter improvises the same decision alone, and the people who reported carry the cost of making it happen.
More context: hard techno on Techno Airlines and our techno festival guide.
Sources: Resident Advisor, Mixmag, DJ Mag, VRT NWS, AFEM.
